Guess I’m Wrong Then
Since It’s Wrong to Friend Your Boss on Facebook, I guess that makes me sort of an idiot, huh?
Yes, one of my Facebook “friends” is my boss. No, that doesn’t really bother me. Not because I would want my boss to know everything about my life, (I don’t want anyone to know everything about my life for that matter!), but because anything that I didn’t want my boss to know, I wouldn’t post on a social networking site!
I use Social Networking tools to connect with family and friends, yes. I also use them to connect with folks who read my blog, or who are involved with the child abuse survivor community online. I also count among my contacts coworkers, former coworkers, professional contacts, peers from other firms, vendors and consultants and probably a couple of people that I don’t even remember how we know each other. In fact, it’s a pretty varied group on Facebook.
That variety doesn’t mean I’m being “irresponsible” in who I share details of my life with. In my case, it actually serves to remind me to stay responsible in all of my online interactions, no matter who I’m interacting with. I’ve been involved in the earliest forms of online networking through blogs, since 2001. I’m comfortable with what I write on all the different subjects I write about. I recognize that some will find one, or more, of the topics I write about more interesting than others, which is why I do sort of separate those out to some extent, and why only one of my blogs feeds to my Facebook profile, but as far as I’m concerned, if I put it online, I’m ok with it being public knowledge and having my name attached to it. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t post it anywhere.
Of course, with Facebook, that also means keeping up with what others post on my profile, which I also do. I try not to associate with people I don’t trust enough to respect my desire to keep my page fun, educational, interesting, yet still professional. I regularly remove miscellaneous stuff from my Facebook Wall that makes it look less than that. Yes, that’s why, if you are sending gifts, hearts, angels or what have you to all your friends, I more than likely removed it from my wall. Nothing personal, it’s just not what I want all over my profile when people look at it. It’s my profile, my choice, and I choose to connect with coworkers, and my boss. Not because I’m naive, quite the opposite, in fact.
Follow these topics: Career, SocialNetworking
Even if you do “friend” the boss, you can still set privacy settings and groups up. The idea: give your boss access to basic and some other non-critical info and set your family and close friends up to see everything. I do the same thing with vendors who sometimes want to “friend” me on FB. With vendors however they see even less.
And when I am questioned about “why can’t I see your posts/pictures/etc?” I tell them that I have it set up so that family sees everything, then as the relationship with the person gets farther and farther away from family/close friend they see less and less.
Then I offer to send them the link on how to set those groups and privacy settings up so they can do it for themselves. Thus taking the edge off some potential “but I thought I was your friend” or similar conversations – by not allowing it to be brought up. I also explain that while I have the Blackberry FB app and have access to the FB site on my mobile I do not, as a rule, accept ANY friend requests (FB, Twitter, etc.) via anything but the browser and the site that sent the request. (It’s a security thing.) That way I can set up the access while accepting the friend request.
That’s my .25 cents on the issue.